Predicative Complement Research Articles

Diachronic Developments of the Concessive Though-Fronting Construction in American English: A Corpus-Based Perspective

ABSTRACT This paper examines diachronic development patterns of the concessive though-fronting construction in American English, using corpus data. The findings of this study, on the one hand, show that the fronted expression has been dominantly an AdjP with a subject predicative complement function and a rather negative connotation, and that the major licensing verbs are linking verbs, which is in line with the previous observations in literature on its contemporary uses. However, the findings also show that the construction has undergone some interesting diachronic changes regarding the increasing dominance of AdjP as the syntactic category of the fronted expression, more diverse grammatical functions of the fronted expression than noted in previous literature, the change of the most preferred position of the concessive though-fronting clause, the strong preference for the singular countable bare NP without a/an, and the uses of the copula as the licensing verb. Furthermore, the attested data provide some examples that weaken the movement-based analysis. The findings, therefore, indicate that it is worth investigating its diachronic properties about expressions that occur in the pre-though position, the salient position of the concessive though-fronting clause, licensing verbs, and the relationship between the pre-though expression and its putative gap in detail.

Facing Two Ways Syntactically: On the Grammar and Use of Promise and Threaten in Three Regional Varieties

ABSTRACT The predicates promise and threaten with a to infinitive complement can be used in two main senses, with each sense representing a different argument structure: subject control, and subject to subject raising. Recent work has shown both uses to have been available for several centuries, with the raising variant emerging later than the control. The present investigation aims to provide insight into the usage patterns of the two predicates in the Englishes of New Zealand, Britain, and North America. The former is compared to the two latter varieties to help further our understanding of the complex system of the grammar of English predicate complementation. The data is examined from quantitative and qualitative perspectives, and the results indicate not only significant variation in usage among the varieties, but also high levels of correlation in some areas. New findings emerge from the study, including on the notion of stance, offering fresh avenues of research into the nature of the complementation patterns examined and their use in three core varieties of English.

ENGLISH ALTERNATIVE INTERROGATIVE STRUCTURES – CONSTITUENTS AND FUNCTIONS WITHIN THE CLAUSE

The article discusses the qualitative and quantitative results from a corpus-based research into the constituents of English alternative interrogative structures (EAISs) and their grammatical functions within the clause. The study has shown that the most typical functions of the EAISs are those of direct object, adjunct and subject-oriented predicative complement. The EAISs often represent a binary unmixed coordination of noun phrases, prepositional phrases or (closed) interrogative subordinate clauses. However, there are also EAISs whose constituents belong to different syntactic categories. Still other EAISs have their final constituent unexpressed. The constituents most often occur within the boundaries of the same sentence.

Subject Control Infinitive Constructions in Early Modern English

This study aims to analyze and describe infinitive sentences with verbs of volition such as desire, wish, want, hope, intend, promise, determine, command in Early Modern English within a generative framework. It is argued that the infinitival clauses have a thematic subject PRO controlled by the matrix subject. It is proved that complex sentences with infinitive complements of matrix predicates of volition obtain subject control function. The findings show syntactic peculiarities of infinitive complementation of monotransitive verbs of volition as subject control infinitive constructions in the studied period of English. Having taken into consideration subject control properties of matrix verbs of volition, direct object monotransitive infinitive function, complementary nature of infinitives, it has been assumed that an infinitive clause generates in a complementizer phrase CP domain, putting forward three possible variants of syntactic analysis of the infinitive types’ configurations as: SVOd (to / bare INF clause), SVOd (NP to / bare INF clause), SVOd (wh- to INF clause) with ‘two-argument arrangement’ of matrix verbs and the infinitive clause as an object predicative complement.

Interactional functions of truncated predicative complement construction “AP + (dek)le” as topic initiator in Shanghai Wu Chinese conversation

Abstract “VP/AP + (dek)le + AP/VP” is a predicative complement construction in Shanghai Wu Chinese (SWC) with (dek)le being the complement marker. In everyday SWC conversation, the terminal complement is often dropped, forming the Truncated Predicative Complement Construction (TPCC): “AP + (dek)le”. The data for the present study are approximately 4.5 h of naturalistic SWC face-to-face conversations. Adopting the methodology of conversation analysis and interactional linguistics, we explore the interactional functions of the TPCC in the SWC conversational data. We find that TPCCs after the possible closure of a topic are deployed to initiate a new topic in two ways: initiating a disjunctive topic shift, and changing to a topic that is connected to a prior one. The findings demonstrate that TPCCs are routinized grammatical patterns accomplishing the conversational action of initiating new topics in SWC conversation.

Event-related states in secondary predication

Analyses of secondary predication based on the aspectual properties of predicative complements are almost standard today. This paper shows that these approaches are not restrictive enough and make a large number of incorrect predictions. It also shows that the meaning of the main (or primary) predicate is essential to restrict the secondary one. Throughout the text, a pragmatically based analysis of the necessary restrictions is compared with one grounded on semantic paradigms, and several examples are proposed of how the latter may be articulated and developed. Event-related states in secondary predication are shown to be necessary, and are claimed to follow from a series if fine-grained semantic notions crucially related to the meaning of the primary verb.

A corpus study ofkasama‘companion’ in Tagalog

AbstractThis paper presents a corpus-based study of a number of different types of previously undescribed constructions formed with the Tagalog nounkasama‘companion’. Apart from independent and attributive uses,kasamafrequently occurs as the predicate of an adjunct clause that can introduce a comitative participant, a semantically depictive secondary predicate, an event-oriented adjunct, or a predicative complement. The study analyses the frequency ofkasamain all of these types of constructions and looks into their specific properties. This includes: the semantic distinction between additive and inclusory constructions withkasama; animacy agreement between arguments ofkasamain additive constructions; variation in case marking of arguments ofkasama; the preponderance of the absence of linkers – commonly known to introduce adverbial clauses in Tagalog – which are used to attach thekasamaclause to the main clause; attested controllers of thekasamaclause; positions available for thekasamaclause in the sentence. Variation in case marking and compatibility with linkers suggests a classification of Tagalog adjunct clauses similar to that of Tagalog adverbials and prepositions. There is also some evidence to believe thatkasamais being grammaticalized as a preposition. Comitative and semantically depictive constructions withkasama, which account for a quarter of the corpus sample, have never been studied before, despite the fact that Tagalog is included in several typological studies on comitative and depictive constructions.

Секвенційні числення першопорядкових логік часткових предикатів з розширеними реномінаціями та композицією предикатного доповнення

We study new classes of program-oriented logical formalisms – pure first-order logics of quasiary predicates with extended renominations and a composition of predicate complement. For these logics, various logical consequence relations are specified and corresponding calculi of sequent type are constructed. We define basic sequent forms for the specified calculi and closeness conditions. The soundness, completeness, and counter-model existence theorems are proved for the introduced calculi.

‘Changing’ and ‘Becoming’: New Perspectives from Cross-Linguistic Cognitive Semantics

Abstract This paper examines the conceptual and semantic relation between ‘changing’ and ‘becoming’ in cross-linguistic perspective to demonstrate that: (i) the assumption that ‘becoming’ is conceptually and semantically related to ‘changing’ is invalidated in at least two cases in which the meaning of ‘becoming’ does not encompass ‘changing’; (ii) the main verbs of ‘becoming’ in different languages are highly polysemous and therefore are not cross-translatable in all contexts of use; (iii) differences in meaning reflect different conceptualizations of ‘becoming’ across languages. These results emerge from a contrastive semantic analysis between the main verbs of ‘changing’ and ‘becoming’ in English, Italian and Japanese made adopting the methodology of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage. This paper also makes a strong case for the epistemic nature of the predicative complements licensed by verbs of ‘becoming’ by showing that a semantic component ‘it is like this, I know it’ emerges consistently from cross-linguistic comparison.

Paths of grammaticalization of the Lithuanian copula VIRSTI ‘turn into’: The case of the inclusive copular constructions

Paths of grammaticalization of the Lithuanian copula VIRSTI ‘turn into’: The case of the inclusive copular constructions

Renominative logics with extended renomination, equality and predicate complement

A new class of program-oriented logical formalisms is investigated – renominative logics with extended renominations, equality predicates, and predicate complement composition. Composition algebras and languages of such logics are described; their semantic properties are investigated. For these logics, a number of logical consequence relations are proposed and investigated, in particular, the logical consequence relations with undefinedness conditions. Properties of these relations form the semantic basis for further construction of sequent-type calculi for the proposed logics.

Першопорядковi композиційно-номінативні логіки з предикатами слабкої та строгої рівності

Development of the new software-oriented logical formalisms is a topical problem. The paper introduces lo­gics of partial predicates with predicate complement and equality predicates, we denote them LCE. They ex­tend logics of quasiary predicates with equality and logics with predicate complement. The composition of the predicate complement is used in Floyd-Hoare pro­­gram logics’ extensions on the class of partial predi­cates. We define predicates of weak equality and of strong equality. Thus, LCE with predicates of weak equality (denoted by LCEw) and LCE with predicates of strong equality (denoted by LCEs) can be specified. LCE can be studied on the first order and renominative levels. We consider composition algebras of LCE, investigate properties of their compositions and describe first order languages of such logics. We concentrate on the properties related to the equality predicates and the composition of the predicate complement. Various variants of logical consequence relations for the first order LCE are introduced and studied: P |= T , P |= F , R |= T , R |= F , P |= TF , R |= TF , P |= IR . In particular, we obtained that LCEw are somewhat degenerate, as for them all the relations are incorrect except for the irrefutability logical consequence relation under the conditions of undefinedness |= IR ^ . At the same time, all of the listed relations are correct for LCEs. Properties of the logical consequence relations are the semantic basis for con­struction of the respective calculi of sequential type. Further investigation of logical consequence relations for LCE includes adding the conditions of undefined­ness and constructing the corresponding sequent calcu­li; it is planned to be displayed in the forthcoming ar­ticles. Problems in programming 2019; 3: 28-44

Відношення логічного наслідку в логіках часткових предикатів з композицією предикатного доповнення

In this paper we study software-oriented logics of partial predicates with new special non-monotonic operation (composition) of the predicate complement. We denote these logics by LC and composition of the predicate complement by . Such operations are used in various versions of the Floyd-Hoare program logic with partial pre- and post-conditions. We describe first order composition algebras and LC languages. For LC, a number of logical consequence relations ( Pc |= T , Pc |= F , Rc |= T , Rc |= F , Pc |= TF , Rc |= TF , P с |= IR ) and logical consequence relations under the conditions of undefinedness ( P |= T ^ , P |= F ^ , R |= T ^ , R |= F ^ , P |= TF ^ , R |= TF ^ ) are specified. Properties of the defined relations are investigated, differences and the relationship between them are given. For the introduced relations, we describe the conditions for their guaranteed presence, the decomposition conditions for formulas and the properties of quantifier elimination. The theorem of elimination of the conditions of undefinedness for the relations |= T ^ and |= F is proved. Thus, the relations P |= T ^ , P |= F ^ , R |= T ^ and R |= F ^ can be expressed by Pc |= T , Pc |= F , Rc |= T and Rc |= F respectively. However, it is shown that |= IR ^ cannot be expressed by P с |= IR . Moreover, it is impossible to define correctly the decomposition conditions for formulas for P с |= IR . Properties of decomposition conditions for formulas are different for the relations |= T and |= F , therefore properties of decomposition and equivalent transformations must be specified indirectly through the corresponding properties of |= T and |= F . First order sequent calculi for the introduced logical consequence relations for LC and logical consequence relations under the conditions of undefinedness will be constructed in in the forthcoming articles. Problems in programming 2019; 3: 11-27

Why is English relative clause extraposed?: A discourse-based statistical approach

This study aims to investigate to what extent grammatical variables are related to each other in order to predict the discourse-based classification of English relative clause extraposition (RCE) construction with the help of a total 597 corpus data. In doing so, an extraposed relative pronoun is assumed to function as a cohesive device, thereby classifying RCE construction into four types according to discourse manner: Discourse-Old-Old-RCE, Discourse-Old-New-RCE, Discourse-New-Old-RCE, and Discourse-New-New-RCE. This discourse-based classification tells us which information is prevalent within an extraposed relative clause as well as a subject NP. Multinomial logistic regression is used for determining which one among the indefiniteness/definiteness of a subject NP, the predicate type (i.e., passive, presentative intransitive, and predicative complement of copula be), and/or grammatical weight (i.e., subject NP-to-extraposed RC length ratio) primarily has the inclination for each type of RCE construction. The definiteness of a subject NP, passive voice, and positive value of the length ratio are critical predictors to bring about Discourse-Old-Old-RCE and Discourse-Old-New-RCE, whereas the indefiniteness of a subject NP is a main predictor of Discourse-New-Old-RCE and Discourse-New-New- RCE. Interestingly, only Discourse-New-Old-RCE taking up the largest portion in this corpus study has a negative correlation with the length ratio. In other words, both a small number of constituents within a subject NP and heavy information within an extraposed relative clause are strongly associated with the occurrence of Discourse-New-Old-RCE. Therefore, the conclusive statement is drawn that the grammatical heaviness within a restrictive relative clause becomes a powerful trigger for the extraposition. (Chodang University)

Proleptic accusatives in Latin

Based on a corpus of 140 proleptic accusatives from early Latin, this article presents new information concerning both the syntax and the pragmatic context of this construction. An investigation into the predicate frames and complementation patterns of the governing verbs is used to illustrate internal syntactic variation of the construction (particularly concerning nosco). An analysis of the pragmatic function of the whole corpus confirms the earlier view that the proleptic constituents are predominantly topics in their discourse contexts. However, a function of contrast is established and shown to be relevant in the case of personal pronouns as proleptic accusatives. Furthermore, it is suggested that using proleptic accusatives may be a major strategy of overt subject expression in the complement clauses with certain governing verb forms

CCRO: Citation’s Context & Reasons Ontology

Research papers can be visualized as a networked information space that contains a collection of information entities, inter-connected by directed links, commonly known as citation graph. There is a possibility to enrich the citation graph with meaningful relations using semantic tags. We have discovered and evaluated more than 150 citations' reasons from the existing published literature to be represented as citation tags. Many of these reasons have overlapped and diffused meanings. Annotating such a large volume of citation graphs with citation's reasons manually is nearly impossible, giving rise to a need to discover the citation's reasons automatically with high accuracy. The first step towards this is developing a minimal set of citation's context and reasons that are disjoint in nature. It would be a great help to the reasoning system if these reasons are represented in a formal way in the form of an ontology. By adopting a well-defined scientific methodology to formulate an ontology of citation reasons, we have reduced 150 reasons into only eight disjoint reasons, using an iterative process of sentiment analysis, collaborative meanings, and experts' opinions. Based on our findings and experiments, we have proposed a citation's context and reasons ontology (CCRO) that provides abstract conceptualization required to organize citations' relations. CCRO has been verified, validated, and assessed by using the well-defined procedures and tools proposed in the literature for ontology evaluation. The results show that the proposed ontology is concise, complete, and consistent. For the instantiation and mapping of ontology classes on real data, we have developed a mapping graph among the verbs with predicative complements in the English Language, the verbs extracted from the selected corpus using the NLP and CCRO classes. Using this mapping graph, the mapping of ontology classes in each citation's sentiment is explained with a complete mapping on the selected dataset.

Пропозиційні логіки часткових предикатів з композицією предикатного доповнення

Пропозиційні логіки часткових предикатів з композицією предикатного доповнення

Descriptive problems in defining the category of copulas: syntactic and semantic distribution of the ingressive copulas VIRSTI and TAPTI

Descriptive problems in defining the category of copulas: syntactic and semantic distribution of the ingressive copulas VIRSTI and TAPTI

Noun Phrases of Jace Wayland�s Utterances in Mortal Instruments: City of Bones

A noun phrase is one of the important elements in building a sentence. Every noun phrase has its own head of the phrase. The structure of the noun phrase can be different according to the modification of the head. There are two kinds of modification to the head of the phrase: pre-modification and post-modification. The existence of the modifiers plays certain roles to the noun phrase. This article presents how the pre-modification affects the character in a literary work. Cassandra Clares Mortal Instruments: City of Bones was chosen as the work to observe. Stylistic approach is used in order to conduct this study. The data of the study is collected from the noun phrases found in one of the characters utterances, Jace Wayland. The analysis presented in this article covers the types of structure, distribution, and function of noun phrases. This study found several results of the analysis. First, there are seven types of noun phrase structure found in the utterances of Jace Wayland. Second, there are four main functions of a noun phrase in a clause: subject, object, prepositional complement, and predicative complement. Third, the noun phrases also have significant role in revealing the character of Jace Wayland: being descriptive and direct.Keywords: noun phrase, stylistics, pre-modification

NOUN PHRASES OF JACE WAYLAND’S UTTERANCES IN MORTAL INSTRUMENTS: CITY OF BONES

A noun phrase is one of the important elements in building a sentence. Every noun phrase has its own head of the phrase. The structure of the noun phrase can be different according to the modification of the head. There are two kinds of modification to the head of the phrase: pre-modification and post-modification. The existence of the modifiers plays certain roles to the noun phrase. This article presents how the pre-modification affects the character in a literary work. Cassandra Clares Mortal Instruments: City of Bones was chosen as the work to observe. Stylistic approach is used in order to conduct this study. The data of the study is collected from the noun phrases found in one of the characters utterances, Jace Wayland. The analysis presented in this article covers the types of structure, distribution, and function of noun phrases. This study found several results of the analysis. First, there are seven types of noun phrase structure found in the utterances of Jace Wayland. Second, there are four main functions of a noun phrase in a clause: subject, object, prepositional complement, and predicative complement. Third, the noun phrases also have significant role in revealing the character of Jace Wayland: being descriptive and direct.Keywords: noun phrase, stylistics, pre-modification